by Lena Dowling
When they reached it, by colonial standards James’s homestead was magnificent. The Hunter mansion rose up on the hillside, by far the largest and grandest edifice for miles around. The much more modest home at the base of the hill, which he guessed to be the original homestead occupied by Lady Hunter, paled as a cottage by comparison.
The rift between husband and wife had to have been profound indeed for a lady of Thea Hunter’s background to turn her back on the accommodations.
Much like the rift between him and his family.
He alighted the carriage beneath two elaborate stone archways supporting a porch built high enough to accommodate a carriage; a luxury that ensured passengers could be conveyed to the house without exposure to the elements.
The foyer had been equipped on both sides with anterooms: one for ladies, and one for gentlemen, with facilities to refresh oneself after a long journey from town.
Inside the house proper they had been received by the butler, and served tea and lemon cake by the housekeeper in a drawing room.
Looking through the French windows at the view, he allowed himself a rare moment of nostalgia for Osbourne Hall. The drama of gazing out at the expanse of Hunter’s lands fanning out before him was a feat he intended to duplicate, if not surpass.
Once refreshed, they had taken a horse each from James’s stables and ridden the couple of miles to the property James wanted to show him.
Having been so long at sea to reach New South Wales, it was months since he had been on a horse. Tristan kept only a carthorse to draw his gig, so there had been no opportunity to ride. It was a pleasure to cover the short distance in the saddle.
James got down from his horse.
‘This would be yours all the way to the top,’ he said, pointing out the boundaries of the block. ‘West to that stand of trees and east to the stream. The shed is staying and a well has been sunk,’ James said, unrolling a survey map onto a stump, obliging Harry to dismount his horse to pay closer attention to the plan.
It was a great deal further from Sydney than Harry had contemplated his farm might be, but it had water—essential in such a warm climate—and a shed that would be useful for storage until the house was built.
Having Hunter not too far away was also not without its attractions. There was so much to learn. How to tell a venomous snake from the benign. Which plants were poisonous and which were medicinal. How and when to plant.
‘I should also mention that I’m following up a lead on a possible tenant for the guesthouse,’ James added as an afterthought. ‘Nothing’s certain yet, but once I have a chance to speak with him, you’ll be the first to know the outcome,’ James said, purposefully, as if to dampen down Harry’s expectations; yet rather than disappointment, Harry felt oddly relieved.
James looked beyond him in the direction of the road.
Harry turned to discover the source of Hunter’s interest. A couple approached on horseback. The man was entirely bald and solidly built with a friendly roundish face. The woman sat tall in the saddle. The man stepped down from his horse, leaving it untethered, and made his approach.
‘Samuel Biggs, may I present Harry Chester. He is the friend of Mallard’s I was telling you about.’
Biggs—he recalled the name but the introduction jarred him momentarily, until he remembered the mode of introduction was perfectly correct. Samuel was older in years and more established in the colony, making him Harry’s theoretical superior.
‘How do you do?’
‘You’re going to buy this lot?’ Samuel asked.
‘I am giving it my serious consideration,’ Harry said.
‘If I might be so bold, I wouldn’t consider too long, sir. This block has some of the best soil in the area. And you will have seen the well and the river. Water is everything out here.’
‘Much depends on Mr Hunter.’
‘Harry has bought the Tullamore,’ James explained. ‘And I’m assisting him with finding a tenant.’
‘Haven’t you already a fine tenant?’ Mrs Biggs said in a broad Irish accent, sliding down from her horse. Until then her features had been shaded by her bonnet, but as she turned her head towards him, Harry took a step back, stunned. Everything about her was reminiscent of Nellie.
Tristan had said that Nellie’s cousin had married Hunter’s overseer, and there could be no doubt that this was the same couple. This woman was heavier boned, but the expression, the eyes, the thick corkscrew-curled hair. If Nellie was the fair version, this woman was the dark.
‘Miss Malone is doing well managing it for the moment,’ Harry said, recognising the same determined spirit in Mrs Biggs that Nellie had.
‘If she’s doing well, then why not keep her on, permanent?’ Mrs Biggs said.
Biggs blushed beet red. ‘Sssh Colleen.’
‘No, Mr Biggs, I will not be shushed. Not when I hear that this gentleman is planning to put our Nell out.’
‘I’m sure it won’t come to that. The new tenant, whoever they are, will be in need of staff,’ Hunter said quickly.
Mrs Biggs trained her attention on James. ‘You know how it is for Nellie.’
She swivelled around and stormed back to her horse. There she propelled herself to the stirrup unaided, and without looking back, instructed her mare to walk on.
‘I apologise for my wife, but I had better follow, or you won’t be the only one suffering at the sharp edge of her tongue. She’s never been one for hiding her feelings.’
James Hunter exploded with laughter. ‘Now there’s an understatement.’ He turned back to Harry. ‘You wouldn’t consider giving Nellie a chance? It appears she’s pushing the business forward.’ Hunter fished a small piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to him. ‘I was handed this, in town this morning.’
Harry unfolded the slip. ‘I wasn’t aware that she had done that—but it doesn’t surprise me.’ Nellie, he had come to appreciate, was not backwards in coming forwards when it came to seizing an opportunity.
‘Regretfully, I’m in too deep with Henley.’
‘You’re mortgaged?’
‘To the hilt.’
If he couldn’t maintain a decent income from all his properties, his entire investment would fall like a house of cards.
‘In that case, I’ll do all I can in expediting the signing on of a tenant for the guesthouse.’
Harry nodded. Whatever his sympathies for Nellie, he had to stick to his strategy. The land was exactly what he was looking for to form the genesis of his grand plan, with expansion as other land became available. Eventually he would put together an estate that would rival the acreage he had turned his back on.
Chapter 16
Nellie scanned the crowd filling the Tullamore.
Harry wasn’t there. She hadn’t seen him since the market. Pikelet said he’d seen him stepping into a flash carriage and he hadn’t been back since.
It was probably for the best. She didn’t need Harry making her feel nervous and putting her off.
But if he had been there, he’d have seen that tonight she hadn’t just filled the house, she had packed it to overflowing. Handing out the bits of paper had worked. People were even crowding the veranda, waiting to take the place of anyone who went out.
Nellie fixed her eyes on her spot at the back, sang the first few notes, and it was as if she had unfastened a couple of saddlebags and dropped all her worries.
It had always been like that with the music. During the terrible years, after Colleen left and Danny was still alive and ruling the roost, it was the music that had saved her.
When Nellie opened her mouth and let the music out, everything else fell away. For as long as the music kept playing, no one could touch her and she could be wherever she wanted to be.
She turned to Fergus. The violin player lifted his violin from under his chin and bowed in her direction. Some fiddlers weren’t cut out for working with singers, but she could trust Fergus not to drown her out or push her on too fast and put her out of brea
th. Like her, he couldn’t read music off the paper, but he only had to hear a song a couple of times and he could play it note for note. She was about to name a first song, but he had already sized up her mood. He began to play, the first part of her favourite song, going round and round on the first few notes of it, waiting for her to join in.
That song, more than any other, took her home.
It was the song that always took her on rambles over the hills at the back of the Malone farm, or dropped her in front of the hearth where her ma had something warm and filling bubbling in the pot for their supper.
The song was home and that was the feeling she got whenever she sang it, and she’d sing it again before the night was through. It always went down well and got the crowd going, especially when there were plenty of Irish in.
***
It had taken Harry longer to get back from Parramatta than he had anticipated. The carriage driver made a couple of detours to drop off messages and goods for Hunter, some of which were heavy enough he’d had to help the driver shift them or it would have taken the rest of the afternoon. Then, just after the first tollbooth, they had come upon a carriage in a ditch. The owner said the horses had been spooked by a kangaroo running across the road. The driver, the owner, and another man travelling with them were unhurt, but they’d needed more manpower to right the carriage and back it up onto the road.
When Harry arrived back at the Tullamore, his head was full of ideas for the Parramatta property. Ideas about how he would carve up the land into sections, some for sheep, others for growing grain, and where he’d build the house and lay out the orchard, the stands of eucalypts that would have to be sacrificed for the house and the fruit trees, and those that would be saved for shelter.
But when he arrived, the veranda was choked with people, with more spilling down the steps into the street.
He managed to pick his way through the crowd, but progress was slow and at the door any further advancement was blocked by a wall of people, many of them soldiers. Half inside, half out, he leaned against the doorframe. With the door propped open, Nellie’s sweet voice spilled outside.
***
All around him, deep Irish-accented voices joined in with the chorus.
Though watery miles have torn us clear apart
No lash will break my convict heart
Far away my soul is trothed there still
Where my love roams her emerald hills.
‘That tune brings back memories, does it not?’ Tristan said, nudging a reluctant convict out of the way to shuffle in beside him.
‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’
‘That hardly surprises, since you didn’t invite me. I had to receive one of these in the street,’ Tristan said, waving a paper slip identical to the one Hunter had shown him.
‘I thought it best not to cause any friction between you and Emily.’
‘Fair enough I suppose, but nevertheless I thought I should come and keep an eye on you.’
‘Is that how you got a leave pass?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘No need to mention you were here then?’
Tristan looked relieved. ‘No need at all.’
‘Then where are you tonight exactly, so we’ve got our stories straight?’ Harry said, more disappointed than annoyed that Tristan was playing this game again.
‘Some catching up at the office and then on to the club.’
‘Noted.’
‘There’s some room now,’ Tristan said, pointing to a gap created by a surge towards the bar.
‘That woman still has the voice of an angel,’ Tristan said once they occupied the free floor space in front of them.
And not just her voice.
The fiddler said something that made Nellie laugh.
Harry had been unprepared for how beautiful Nellie would look done up in her evening gown. In the twilight, the fading evening light streaming in through the south-westerly facing windows reflected off the rich navy blue of her dress, contrasting with her pale skin. And the gown dipped low, to an insert of black lace that teased the imagination.
‘That last song, the words—they’re different,’ Harry said. Tristan’s father had sung the song often at the end of the day when they shared a whiskey and piece of soda bread toasted on the embers at the forge.
‘You remember the words?’
‘I could probably still fit a horseshoe, if I had to.’
‘Don’t joke. If you can’t collect enough off your rents to satisfy Henley, you might be hiring yourself out as a smithy yet. But tell me, why smithing of all things?’
‘Remember Stonebow?’
‘The stallion that had you flat on your back more times than I can count?’
‘He’d never let anyone else near him to shoe him, so I already had that part of the trade at least, and your father put in a word.’
With the way he had worked his way up from blacksmith to stock and grain merchant and auctioneer, and then eventually being hired by his father to oversee the whole estate, Hugh Mallard was a hero to the village men.
‘What about your father? It must have been humiliating for him to have his son and heir staying in the village and working at the local forge.’
‘I suppose he thought that with me staying with Hugh, he had eyes and ears on me and a tongue he’d be able to manipulate into bringing me round.’
‘I’d like to see anyone manipulate Old Hugh.’
‘A toast then—to your father,’ Harry said.
‘To me da,’ Tristan said.
It was easy to forget his friend’s roots. At the club, and at the office, entertaining friends, even en famille, Tristan had expunged any trace of his village accent. It was only when they were alone after a few drinks that Tristan ever let the facade of an English gentleman drop. Then he would slip back into his natural Irish patois. And it was then he was always most at ease.
While Nellie sang another set of songs; sea shanties, mainly, that appealed to the mariners in the crowd, he and Tristan stood side by side. If he ignored the rough spirit being served and the number of redcoats, they might just as easily have been back in the days of their youth in the Harp and Angel where the publican had turned a blind eye to them sneaking in.
With the maritime ballads exhausted, the music stopped. Tristan looked to the bar.
‘Well, I’d rather not fight my way back through that. The bar’s four deep.’
‘You’re off home?’
‘To the club.’ Tristan winked at him. ‘Firm up the alibi, as it were. Will I see you there later?’
‘I’ll see how things go here,’ Harry said.
Once Tristan had negotiated his way back through the crowd on the steps, Harry moved forwards, enforcing his landlord’s right of passage; eventually pushing his way through the crowd to the bar where he escaped the crush by circling around behind it.
Pike stopped serving to scowl at him, then relented when he took the pressure off by seeing to some of the more impatient patrons.
Once the customers tapping their coins on the bar had thinned out, Nellie and the fiddler resumed the show.
She sang a set of Irish songs that set the crowd alight, finishing up with an encore of the same song she had sung not long after he arrived.
The men went wild, whooping and stomping their feet. When Nellie moved to the edge of the stage, every hand in proximity groped at her, others grasped her hair, soldiers mostly, pulling her this way and that. Nellie’s face darkened with terror, calling desperately for help, but the way ahead of Pike was blocked.
With his extra height, Harry could see a quicker path. Pulling men left and right until he made it to her side, he roared for everyone to back away. Then he stepped in behind her, one hand across her chest, the other held high, balled in a fist, free to strike.
Pike turned then, ploughing forwards, cutting a path with Nellie safely bookended between them. At the door, Pike held it open for the briefest of seconds and then, given that no man brea
ched it, he assumed Pike had placed himself squarely in front of it, barring entry.
***
The lamp in the passageway had gone out.
In the dark, Nellie’s senses came alive. Her heart pounded. Harry’s broad arm held her firmly across her breast, pulling her in close. His breath blew warm on her neck, his chest rising and falling. For a moment they stood still, neither speaking until his arm, brushing her cheek, creaked the handle to the kitchen door open.
With the lamp from the room lighting their way, Harry released his hold, and she stepped forwards.
In the brightness of the kitchen, she crossed her hands across her chest, holding opposite arms tight, feeling as if she were too late somehow and that something had already been lost.
‘Are you alright?’ he said, after he’d closed the door behind them.
‘Yes, apart from that,’ she said, looking down at the sleeve that had been pulled away from the bodice of her dress.
‘I meant you.’
She dropped her hands to her sides. ‘I’m fine. It was just some stitching, that’s all.’
‘It didn’t look like nothing to me.’
‘If I had more money, I’d employ another doorman.’ When all was said and done, everything came down to money she didn’t have.
‘Then at least take on a barmaid, so Pike can move about.’
‘Are you offering to drop my rent?’
Harry didn’t reply.
‘I didn’t think so.’
‘It might have turned ugly.’
‘But it didn’t,’ she said quickly, in case Harry changed his mind about her singing and selling drinks.
‘Next time it might.’
‘Next time I’ll watch what I sing.’ There had been a lot of Irish in the crowd and she had sung too many Irish songs. ‘Got ’em stirred up thinking of home. That’s all.’
‘That song, the one you sang at the end—the lyrics were different to what I remember?’
‘They’re me own words.’
‘You wrote it?’
‘It was years ago now, back when leaving Ireland were still raw.’